iPhone 6S

Posted on September 10, 2015 by

Release

On 9^th Sept 2015, the world stood with baited breath awaiting the imminent announcement of the new range of Apple products. Speculation has swirled for months around what would be included in the new line up. The much talked about iPad Pro perhaps? A new Rose Gold iPhone 6s? At 6pm in the Bill Graham Civic Auditorium, in San Francisco, a venue with a capacity of 7000 seats, Tim Cook, the CEO of Apple, held everyone in the room’s attention.

The press conference was designed like a crescendo. After the introduction Tim breezed into talking about the Apple Watch. There were upgrades introduced such as new apps like Facebook Messenger and luxury accessories like the Hermes wristband, but no new model as yet.

After a brief wrap up he headed into announcing the much awaited iPad Pro – the tablet designed to replace a laptop. The iPad Pro was given a full brief which included the large display, coming in at the same size as a MacBook’s, a 1.8x faster CPU and a 360x faster GPU than the previous iPad, 4 speakers and a 10 hour battery, along with a portable keyboard and stylus.

From there came the latest Apple TV. The TV that focuses on apps to do so much more than just watch TV shows. Designed for gaming, shopping and sports, the TV comes with a Siri gyroscopic remote for asking Siri things like “Who is the main actor in this show” to bring out the best of your TV experience.

Then last, the big build up finally revealed the iPhone 6S and iPhone 6S Plus, the mid cycle upgrades to the iPhone 6.

What’s New

When you first take a look at the new iPhone you can see it’s a little different from its predecessor. The aluminium has been upgraded (to prevent the bending that occurred in the iPhone 6) and the screen is stronger. The Rose Gold version of the phone is perfect for those who love pink.

Under the hood there are the usual upgrades to the processors to make them faster and smarter, but that’s not a huge focus here.

The most interesting and touted feature introduced this round is Apple’s 3D Touch technology. The technology uses a three touch system – a short tap, regular tap and a hard tap to introduce different features, along with haptic feedback (a small vibration sent to your finger tip) to let you know when you’re making the correct taps. These can be used to “Peek” and “Pop”. For instance you can peek into your apps to bring up a small menu on each from your homepage. Another way to use it is for emails – peek into the email in your Inbox with a small tap and then hold for longer to pop it and read the full thing.

The new camera features a MP upgrade and 4K video capabilities, with no time limit (unlike other smartphone). The iPhone 6S also has Retina flash, an idea Apple has appropriated from LG. This uses the front display as a flash for taking selfies (it makes the screen very bright). Another camera feature is the “Live Photo”, a feature which captures 1.5 seconds of video either side of a photo. This may or may not be very useful, depending on what various app makers decide it’s suitable for.

The iPhone 6S will also come standard with the new version of iOS, iOS 9. iOS 9 will feature a number of useful upgrades such as ad-blocking extensions and greater security measures, along with a new set of emojis which will include the taco, cheese and burrito emojis.

Specs

Size: 138.3mm length, 67.1mm width, 7.1mm depth [same as iPhone 6]

Screen: 4.7 inches at 1334 x 750 resolution which is 326 pixels per inch [same as iPhone 6], strongest glass [upgrade from iPhone 6]

Casing: 7000 series aluminium [upgrade from iPhone 6]

Weight: 143g [slightly heavier than iPhone 6]

Colour: Rose Gold [new colour], Space Grey, Gold, Silver

Processor: A9 64 bit processor with M9 coprocessor [upgrades from iPhone 6]

On-board Storage: 16GB, 64GB and 128GB storage [same as iPhone 6]

Cloud Storage: 50GB iCloud storage from $0.99

Camera: 12MP f2.2 aperture, 4K video, 5MP self-facing camera [upgrades from iPhone 6]

Networks: 802.11ac Wi-Fi [same as iPhone 6], LTE-A support [upgrade from iPhone 6]

Battery: 50hrs audio, 11hrs video or browsing (Wi-Fi), 10 days standby [slight upgrade from iPhone 6]